Volga. In 1130, in keeping with Monomakh’s policy of securing his family’s control over the other princely families, Mstislav exiled the disloyal princes of Polotsk to Constantinople and replaced them with his own men. Thus, before he died, he controlled, directly or through his brothers or his sons, Kiev, Pereyaslavl, Smolensk, Rostov, Suzdal, Novgorod, Polotsk, Turov, and Vladimir in Volyn. Moreover, Vsevolod of Chernigov was his son-in-law. Mstislav, called “the Great” by some, died on April 15, 1132, and was buried in the Church of St. Theodore, which he had built. See also: KIEVAN RUS; NOVGOROD THE GREAT; ROTA SYSTEM; VLADIMIR MONOMAKH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Dimnik, Martin. (1994). The Dynasty of Chernigov 1054-1146. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. Franklin, Simon, and Shepard, Jonathan. (1996). The Emergence of Rus 750-1200. London: Longman.
(1796-1843), army officer who conspired to overthrow Nicholas I.
Nikita Muraviev was one of the army officers involved in the Decembrist movement to overthrow Tsar Nicholas I. He is best known for the constitution he drafted for a new Russian state. Although he did not actually participate in the uprising on December 14, 1825, he was condemned to death when it failed. His sentence was later commuted to twenty years at hard labor in the Nerchinsk mines. He died in Irkutsk Province.
In 1813, after studying at Moscow University, Muraviev embarked on a military career, and in 1816 he joined with other aristocratic young officers in organizing a secret society called the Union of Salvation. Led by Paul Pestel, it was renamed the Union of Welfare a year later. Stimulated by the French Revolution (1789) and the Napoleonic Wars (1812-1815), the officers had been influenced by the liberal ideas of French and German philosophers while serving in Europe or attending European universities. The new Russian literature, with its moral and social protest against Russia’s backwardness, also was an important influence, especially the works of Nikolai Novikov, Alexander Radishchev, and the poets Alexander Pushkin and Alexander Gri-boyedov. The Arzamas group, an informal literary society founded around 1815, attracted several men who later became Decembrists, including Nikita Muraviev, Nikolai Turgenev, and Mikhail Orlov.
MUSAVAT
Economic stagnation, high taxation, and the need for major reforms motivated Muraviev and the other Decembrists to take action. They advocated the establishment of representative democracy but disagreed on the form it should take: Muraviev favored a constitutional monarchy; Pestel, a democratic republic. To get rid of tsarist agents and members who were either too dictatorial or too conservative, the organizers dissolved the Union of Welfare in 1821 and set up two new groups: The Northern Society, centered in St. Petersburg, was headed by Muraviev and Nicholas Turgenev, an official in the Ministry of Finance. The more radical Southern Society was dominated by Pestel. During the interregnum between Alexander I and Nicholas I, the two societies plotted the coup.
Muraviev was the ideologist for the Northern Society, drafting propaganda and a constitution that was found among his papers following his arrest. The uncompleted constitutional project reveals the strong impact of the American constitution. Like Pestel, he envisioned a republic: “The Russian nation is free and independent. It cannot be the property of a person or a family. The people are the source of supreme power. And to them belongs the sole right to formulate the fundamental law.” Muraviev advocated a constitutional monarchy along the lines of the thirteen original states of North America, separation of powers, civil liberties, and the emancipation of the serfs. Although his constitution guaranteed the equality of all citizens before the law, the landed classes were recognized as having special rights and interests. Thus Mu-raviev rejected Pestel’s idea of universal suffrage; only property- holders would be allowed to vote and to seek elective office.
What distinguishes Muraviev’s draft constitution is its advocacy of federalism, an idea not echoed by any major political movement in Russia until the twentieth century. Muraviev argued that “vast territories and a huge standing army are in themselves obstacles to freedom.” Too much of a nationalist to call for the breakup of the empire, however, Muraviev urged that Russia adopt a federalist system as a way to reconcile “national greatness with civic freedom.”
The Decembrist uprising failed because of the plotters’ incompetence and lack of mass support. Some defected, and others, at the last minute, failed to carry out their assignments. Five of their leaders, including the poet Kondraty Ryleyev, were executed. Despite the stricter censorship Nicholas I imposed after the crushed rebellion, the memory of the Decembrists inspired many writers and revolutionaries, especially the political refugee Alexander Herzen, who established the journal The Bell (Kolokol) in London in 1857 to “propagate free ideas within Russia.” See also: DECEMBRIST MOVEMENT AND REBELLION; EMPIRE, USSR AS; NICHOLAS I
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Mazour, Anatole G. (1937). The First Russian Revolution, 1825: The Decembrist Movement, Its Origins, Development, and Significance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Founded in secrecy in October 1911, Musavat (Equality) ultimately grew into the largest, longest-lived Azerbaijan political party. The founders of the party were former members of Himmat (Endeavor) party, Azerbaijan’s first political association, led by Karbali Mikhailzada, Abbas Kazimzada, and Qulan Rza Sharifzada. Formation of Musavat was a response to their disillusionment with the 1905 Russian Revolution. They were also inspired by a common vision of Turkic identity and Azeri nationalism.
Musavat attracted many of its followers from among Azerbaijan’s bourgeoisie-intelligentsia, students, entrepreneurs, and other professionals; the party also included workers and peasants among its ranks. In 1917 a new party evolved from the initial merger of these former Himmatists and the Ganja Turkic Party of Federalists, as reflected in the organization’s name, the Turkic Party of Federal-ists-Musavat. At this stage Musavat came under the leadership of Mammad Rasulzade and consisted of two distinct factions, the Left or Baku faction and the Right or Ganja faction. These factions differed on economic and social ideology such as land reform, but closed ranks on two crucial issues, one being secular Turkic nationalism. The other was the vision of Azerbaijan as an autonomous republic and part of a Russian federation of free and equal states. In April 1920, when Azerbaijan came under Soviet domination, the native intelligentsia were afforded some amount of accommodation in accordance with the Soviet nationalist program supervised by Josef Stalin. However, the accommodation only extended to the left wing of the Musavat party.
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Members of the right wing were subsequently imprisoned or killed. By 1923 the Musavat came under pressure from communist apparatchiks to dissolve the organization. Musavat members fortunate enough to flee formed exile communities in northern Iran or Turkey and remained abroad for the duration of the Soviet era. The self-proclaimed successor of the Musavat party, Yeni Musavat Par-tiyasi (New Musavat Party) was reestablished in 1992. Its leadership was drawn from the Azerbaijan Popular Front, an umbrella group representing a broad spectrum of individuals and groups opposed to the communist regime in the waning years of the Soviet Union and active in the post-Soviet transition. In the early twenty-first century Musavat is currently in the forefront of the opposition movement in competition with the Popular Front. Yeni Musavat is characterized as the party of the Azeri intelligensia and is led by Isa Gambar. The key planks of the party platform are the liberation of land captured by Armenian forces in the Karabakh conflict and forcing the resignation of Heidar Aliev’s regime, which it views as corrupt and illegitimate. See also: AZERBAIJAN AND AZERIS; CAUCASUS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
European Forum. (1999). “Major Political Parties in Azerbaijan.” «http://www.europeanforum.bot-consult .se/cup/azerbaijan/parties.htm». Suny, Ronald Grigor. (1972). The Baku Commune, 1917-1918: Class and Nationality in the Russian Revolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Swietockhowski, Tadeusz. (1995). Russia and Azerbaijan: A Borderland in Transition. New York: Columbia University Press.
